A collection of photography and exploration focusing on Upstate South Carolina and beyond.
Wednesday morning was a portentous day for my friend Ken. He was closing on his house, taking the dive into home ownership. I accompanied Ken to his closing, and helped celebrate with a toast at his abode.
Both of us had most of the day open, so we grabbed cameras, grabbed a quick lunch (at an excellent sandwich shop in Clemson, I might add), then headed out to explore.
A couple of weeks ago I visited the small Spartanburg County town of Pacolet, and noticed that they were wrapping everything in Christmas lights. I decided that we really needed to come back after dark and see what was going on. So, the other evening Laura and I headed out to see the end result.
Really, there is no good way to get to Pacolet from Greenville. It’s completely out of the way, and this could turn out to be a bust. To make the most of it, our plan was to drive straight there, then slowly make our way back through various other neighborhoods looking for lights. So, we headed up I-85 toward Spartanburg.
As we reached downtown Spartanburg it looked like their Christmas parade was just breaking up. Somehow we managed to skirt the worst of the traffic areas. As we headed south out of Spartanburg things seemed a bit…dim. In fairness, this passes through an industrial area and there aren’t that many lights, but even as we approached Pacolet it still seemed very dark. Laura was skeptical.
It started with a trivia contest on Facebook. The Laurens County Museum had posted the following:
TUESDAY TRIVIA CHALLENGE!
Waterloo’s Harris Springs was a popular mineral water resort in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but there was another spring near Clinton that was known for its bottled water. Can you name it?
Good Luck!
Having recently visited the area, I knew the answer – Stomp Springs. I submitted my answer, and was pleased to learn I had won. I was told to stop by any Sunday to claim my prize. This Sunday was the perfect opportunity, before the madness of the Christmas season starts in full swing. It was raining and cold, but I decided to head down anyway.
I had wanted to visit the museum, regardless of any trivia answer. Elaine Martin from the Laurens Library had also been active with the museum, and suggested that I visit. The trivia prize was the perfect excuse for a gloomy Sunday get-away.
The museum is located in a colorful string of buildings on Laurens Street, just off of the main square. I entered to find Julius Bolton and Ernie Seagars sitting behind a reception table. I introduced myself, and told them I was there to claim my prize. Mr. Bolt wanted to know if I was from Laurens, so I gave a brief background and my history with the town. At that point, Mr. Seagars asked if I had a brother named Houston. I replied that I did. Turns out he and Houston were classmates at Laurens High School.
I’ve written about this before (In Search of Phantom Stairs, August 24, 2008.) There is something intriguing about old masonry. This is especially true of recognizable structures such as stairs, columns, and walls. While it’s cool to find a pile of rubble or old road bed or foundation in a field, a standing remnant goes beyond that. You can tell that something was here – something with intent and purpose. It’s the discovery of those ruins, as well as the exploration of what had been there that keeps me going on these photo treks For this particular photo trek I headed out across Spartanburg County, and found a wealth of such masonic hints of the past.
I was partly inspired by fellow explorer Mark Elbrecht’s recent trek to the Whitestone community and his explorations of the old Whitestone Springs Resort (Part 1, Part 2.) Mark had done an excellent job covering that area, so I didn’t want to repeat his trip (although I may check those spots out later.) My trek would take me across Spartanburg with a dip into Union and Cherokee Counties. Truth be told, I only had a vague idea where I was headed, and that was a problem. By omitting some additional preliminary research I just missed out on some very cool spots. More on that later, but for now, here’s what I found…
Yeah, it’s that time of year. The turkey has barely been cleared away, and the malls will be filled with Black Friday shoppers. The song EVERYONE will hear at some point is “Carol of the Bells.” In fact, most shoppers and just about any media consumer will have already heard it, since Christmas music is shoved down our throats starting at Halloween.
The song is on our repertoire for the upcoming Christmas Concert with the Greenville Chorale. So, obviously, we’ve been working on it since starting rehearsals in mid-November. Most of us have sung this so many times that we have it memorized.
Carol of the Bells is one of those earworms that people either love or hate. I tend to come down on the former side, but it can get old. The song was based on an ancient Ukrainian folk chant that was supposed to have mystical powers. It was typically sung for as a new year carol, which in the Ukraine was considered to be April. The chant consists of four notes repeated over and over with varying text.
In 1916 Mykola Leontovych took the four-note motif and arranged it into the song with which we are now familiar. Leontovych’s Ukrainian text kept the new year theme, and was entitled “Shchedryk,” which means “bountiful evening.” In 1936 Peter Wilhousky wrote the English “Carol of the Bells” text, and a hypnotic marketing tool was born.
Lots has happened over the last couple of weeks. I haven’t been timely in keeping up with the blog, and now Thanksgiving is upon us. I’ll try to play a bit of catch-up here.
First, remembrances…
Last week the world marked the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. There were lots of specials on various news outlets. There were all of the per-requisite conspiracy theories, but I found most of these to be quite interesting.
Many remember where they were when they received the news. I was only two years old at the time, about to turn three. I don’t remember anything. The first person I remember as president was Lyndon Johnson. I definitely remember Nixon’s first election as president.
Also premiering 50 years ago was Doctor Who. In fact, it debuted the day of the assassination. The producers insisted that the first episode be broadcast twice, since no one was watching the first time. William Hartnell’s Doctor in “An Unearthly Child” was quite different from modern interpretations of the character. BBC had an excellent dramatization of the production of those early episodes. The next night was the actual episode to commemorate the anniversary – “The Day of the Doctor”. The episode was broadcast without commercials, and was absolutely fantastic. It hit all of the right notes for the Whovian fandom, and was immensely satisfying.
In that last series of posts about our photo trek across Edgefield and Saluda Counties I mentioned several surnames, and that I was distantly related to them. The names from the Logue-Timmerman feud to whom I’m distantly related are Timmerman, Dorn and Harling. And I mean seriously distantly. Just to clarify how distantly related, here’s … Read More “Edgefield-Saluda Relations” »
In Part One of this trek we visited the site of the Logue-Timmerman Feud in Northern Edgefield County. In Part Two we explored Edgefield itself, and found the site of the ghost town of Pottersville and an abandoned church. In this final installment we migrate to Saluda County, and visit a town with an unusual church, and find a ghost town with a heavenly name.
Johnston , Ward, and Spann Methodist Church
We left Horn Creek Baptist Church, retracing our steps along the dirt Old Stage Coach Road. I had plugged the coordinates for our next stop into the GPS, but it kept wanting us to turn onto some even dicier dirt roads. I stayed the course until we reached pavement, then turned onto Gary Hill Road. Here we passed a MASSIVE federal penitentiary. We didn’t think it would be kosher to stop and photograph a prison, but here’s an image of it from Google Earth:
Read More “A Feud, a Mule, a Senator, a Potter, and a Ghost Town or Two – Part Three” »
In the previous post I described how a mule kick killed eight people, and we explored the Little Stevens Creek area. In this post fellow singer and explorer Tommy Thompson and I ventured further into Edgefield County seeking out pottery and abandoned churches.
Edgefield has long been known for its amazing pottery. ETV’s History Detectives even did a segment on one of the “face jugs” from the area. Of course, I was not as interested in the pottery itself as in the town that grew up around the industry. Landrumville, aka Pottersville was located just north of Edgefield. Robert Mills’ 1825 Atlas shows its location.
I wanted to see if I could find it. The site is on the National Register of Historic Places. However, since it is still an active archeological dig, all of the location information has been redacted. There are lots of scholarly articles on the site. But, just like the NRHP listing, any article I could find said that the kilns were on private property, and that the address was restricted.
As a workaround, I took the Mills map and tried to overlay it onto Google Earth. Matching the roads and landmarks from 170 years ago was not an easy task, but in the end I came up with an approximate set of coordinates. Even if I couldn’t reach Pottersville exactly, at least I would be able to take a photo of the area.
Read More “A Feud, a Mule, a Senator, a Potter, and a Ghost Town or Two – Part Two” »
I decided this is going to have to be a multi-part post. Otherwise, dear readers, you will be scrolling for an uncomfortable amount of time. We saw an amazing amount of stuff on Tuesday’s photo trek, and it all has an equally amazing amount of back-story.
Fellow Chorale member Tommy Thompson sent me an interesting story entitled “How A Mule Kick Killed Eight People.” The story was about a feud in Edgefield County, and we decided that we absolutely had to head down that way for a photo trek.
Of course, as interesting as the story of the feud was, a single location just doesn’t work for a photo trek. So, the night before I loaded up my GPS with several possible targets in the Edgefield area. The next morning I rendezvoused with Tommy down on Augusta Road, and we headed south.
There is always so much along this road that is of interest, and it’s tempting to stop and take photos of every rustic barn and old house. I’ve long found that if I allow myself to get distracted like this, I never reach my destination. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but sometimes not. We drove straight on through Greenwood and turned onto Highway 178. This route took us to the community of Epworth. There are some interesting old buildings there, and my great-great grandparents are buried only a couple of miles north of there. There is also the old Epworth Camp Meeting site. The only distraction I allowed was a brief turn onto the Epworth property so Tommy could see the old tabernacle and cabins. I had photographed and explored it before, so we kept going.
Read More “A Feud, a Mule, a Senator, a Potter, and a Ghost Town or Two – Part One” »